The Media with Representations or Expectations?


The first show I have thought of, regarding representations of a real woman’s life, was the show called, Being Mary Jane.
This show is about a woman, Mary Jane Paul, who successfully became a TV reporter. I wouldn’t say this show describes lives of all women, but it describes how women have hard time having a balance with work and life very well. Mary Jane struggles with going through her relationships, marriage, and taking care of her own family while she tries to be successful as a reporter on a famous TV program. I feel this show tells us that women “have to strive” to be successful and usually alone if not lucky. There are successful working women who have supportive families including their husbands, but I also feel that having college degree makes women want to work for a better job. When women hope to work for better jobs, they tend to face the fact that they have to think about marriage and pregnancy. When they decide to be a mother, they tend to end up quitting their jobs. In this show, Mary Jane’s friend, Lisa who is a single mother of two children, can be a representative of working mother who faces a challenge of having a balance of life and career. Even though Lisa’s ex husband or this show itself does not directly mentions that cooking and taking of her children are her responsibilities as a mother, I can feel that Lisa is asked to be a “better mother” who cooks, drives kids to school, cleans the entire house and so on. I don’t think it is overwhelming because our society is still based on social expectations of being a man or woman.
I don’t really watch TV here in the United States, except for Netflix, but I know some Japanese shows that describes real life of women or mothers. One of the best shows that I can think of is called, Suna no Tou, a show about a mother of two kids. She is a stay home mom and has to deal with neighbors. This show describes a part of Japanese society expecting a mother to take care of children and cook for her family. I believe all, if not many, cultures have shows that reflect social expectations of being women.

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 9, 2017 at 6:36 AM

    I agree Namiki, I think there's many shows that communicate these expectations, they are a performance of reality. It's usually targeted toward upper middle class depictions, but there are still a variety of representations. I wonder what the cross-cultural differences are, your post made me remember the show Roseanne which also deals and critiques what it means to be an working mother.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Polarization a Bad Thing?

How we perceive opposing opinions is different and yet very important. We can take opposing opinions as if they hate us, or we can try to observe and even learn how the others view the same fact differently. For instance, when I meet a person who has a totally different personality from me, as I get bothered at first, I become more interested in knowing how s/he lived and what her or his background is. Similarly, I became curious to know what makes people to support certain politicians when I didn’t know much about the politicians.. Having polarization, depending on how we utilize, can be beneficial to expand and raise our level of knowledge. In order for polarization to be good or beneficial, I believe there should be appreciation and respect to some extent while being an opponent. Then, the media has an important role to make the balance of divisions. Since the media has such strong influences, they can give the audiences impacts on how we take different opinions. Thus, the media
Read more

Op-ed topic

There are different college education systems in different regions of the world. For one of my op-eds, I am going to discuss about how the U.S. college education does not have to be for four years.
Read more

My Major is Business and I Have Music Class (Op-ed)

My Major is Business and I Have Music Class By Namiki Tanaka APR. 18, 2017 Last summer when I went back home in Japan, my mother introduced me to her friends and proudly said, “She wanted to study psychology in the United States, and now she is getting a master’s degree.” I was very confused. Every time I told my parents what I was studying in college, they gave me questioning looks. In 2015, I earned my bachelor’s degree in global studies with emphasis of international business. My parents even came to see me walking on the stage; they still don’t know what exactly I studied unless I explain again and again. Sitting in my biology class, back in 2011, I was wondering why I had to learn about a subject that I would not use after the final exam and studied in high school. In the first two years of college, I went to a community college before transferring to a four years institution. In the community college, more than one professor said, “Well, I’m assuming that you
Read more